It’s easy enough to argue that widespread use of artificial intelligence has some potential to raise important new questions about economic life, political choices and values.
“The question is not which jobs will survive. It is what kind of economy we are building, and for whom,” a World Economic Forum note asks.
“A livelihood is not a role,” WEF suggests. “ It is a sustained capacity to generate value, dignity and security over time, for a person, their family and their society.”
“It encompasses income, but also purpose, identity and belonging,” WEF notes.
Catholic social teaching dovetails.
Catholic social teaching assigns work an importance that goes well beyond economics or material production.
Work is not simply a means of earning income, nor is it merely a commodity bought and sold in markets.
Instead, work is understood as an essential aspect of human dignity, a way in which persons participate in God's continuing work of creation, develop their own humanity, serve their neighbors, and contribute to the common good.
So AI has spiritual and religious implications.
John Paul II explained that because humans are created in God's image, they imitate God's own creative activity through their labor.
Perhaps the most distinctive contribution of the encyclical Laborem Exercens is its teaching that work is participation in creation.
For such reasons, even some apparently-appealing ideas such as universal basic income are insufficient compensation for AI-induced productivity gains.
Work matters for human dignity and meaning, and UBI does not help, in that regard.
Humans need “work” because, as the Second Vatican Council's Gaudium et Spes teaches:
through work people develop their talents;
acquire virtues;
grow in responsibility;
contribute to society;
become more fully themselves.
Gaudium et Spes marked the first time an ecumenical council addressed the entire world rather than just focusing on internal church matters. It established modern Catholic social teaching, so is foundational.
Catholic social teaching is that work is fundamentally relational and imbued with moral purpose.
Work serves:
one's family
customers
fellow workers
local communities
society as a whole.
Markets help coordinate work, but the moral purpose of work extends beyond markets, as markets and work are ordered to the promotion of the common good of society and people, including:
economic prosperity
cultural development
scientific advancement
political stability
social solidarity.
So employment and work are viewed not merely as a private contract but as participation in building society.
For that reason, pursuit of the common good means supporting:
opportunities for productive employment
just wages
safe working conditions
reasonable working hours
rights of association and labor unions
protection of family life.
Catholic social teaching suggests several enduring principles:
Economic systems exist for persons, not persons for economic systems
Every form of honest work possesses inherent dignity
Workers should never be reduced to costs or commodities
Technological innovation should enhance rather than diminish human flourishing
Work is both economically productive and spiritually formative
Human labor contributes to God's continuing work of creation and to the common good.
AI does raise these issues in a new context. How do we ensure humans have work, irrespective of the impact of AI?
Because work matters, not simply as a means to sustenance, but as a fundamental expression of human creativity.
At the same time, Catholic social teaching disagrees with purely market-based views (which reduce work to a commodity) and purely collectivist views (which subordinate the worker to the state).
“Markets that operate with morals” might be one somewhat inadequate way of expressing the formulation.
